Microsoft and Nikon alliance

[GregW]

Following: the launch of Nikon's P6000 proprietary Windows only NRW format; a lackluster Capture NX2 (Mac) update;  and now a cross-licensing agreement between the two companies, should I be worried?

Microsoft is investing more in it's Mac Business Unit.  It's reasonable to assume Nikon do not want to disenfranchise a significant and growing user base. But. Both Microsoft and Nikon have an established history of developing proprietary formats. This makes life difficult for third party developers, leaving customers with few options.

Understandably Adobe have expressed concerns about NRW, but am I right to feel concerned?

Press Release

Microsoft and Nikon Enter Into Patent Cross-Licensing Agreement
Agreement furthers Microsoft and Nikon collaboration on new products and features in digital imaging.

REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO — Aug. 27, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. and Nikon Corp. have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement to further the development of each company’s current and future product lines.
The agreement covers digital cameras made by Nikon as well as a broad range of other consumer products each company manufactures and sells. The agreement was signed by representatives from both companies at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicated that Microsoft is being compensated by Nikon.

Microsoft and Nikon have a long history of collaborating to bring high-quality, cutting-edge consumer products to the market, including wireless cameras and RAW processing technologies. The companies believe that this patent cross-licensing agreement will substantially benefit customers of consumer products including digital cameras. Both parties will be able to innovate openly with each other’s technologies, enabling new features and products to come to market.

“This agreement will extend and enhance our already successful, long-standing collaboration with Nikon, and will allow us to provide even better products to our customers,” said Josh Weisberg, director of the Rich Media Group at Microsoft.

“This agreement is another great example of how industry leaders are coming together to collaborate through intellectual property licensing, and by doing so enabling innovation that will ultimately benefit the consumer,” said Horacio Gutierrez, vice president of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft. “We are proud of the quality of our broad, global patent portfolio, and we are pleased to be working with an industry leader such as Nikon.”

“At Nikon, we want to continue to lead the industry in pioneering photography solutions and give our customers access to innovative technology,” said Naoki Tomino, director, member of the board and General Manager of Intellectual Property Headquarters at Nikon. “This agreement is a natural extension of our long-standing relationship with Microsoft, and we look forward to collaborating and bringing exciting new products to the market.”

Microsoft’s Commitment to Licensing Technology
The licensing agreement is another example of the important role IP plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant IT ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 500 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and competitors to access its IP portfolio. The program was developed to open access to Microsoft’s significant research and development investments and its growing, broad patent and IP portfolio. Over the past two years, Microsoft has entered into similar agreements with Alpine Electronics Inc., Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd., Kenwood Corp., Kyocera Mita Corp., LG Electronics, NEC Corp., Nortel Networks, Novell Inc., Olympus Corp., Onkyo Corp., Pentax, Samsung, Seiko Epson Corp. and Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. (JVC).

More information about Microsoft’s licensing programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/ip.

About Nikon
Nikon has carved out a place as a pioneer of optical technology in Japan and the world since its inception in 1917. Today, Nikon commands a high global standing in the manufacture and sale of camera-related products, such as digital cameras, as well as binoculars and other optical products for consumers, such as ophthalmic lenses. These items complement our diverse array of industrial precision equipment that includes semiconductor-related equipment, IC and LCD steppers and scanners, microscopes and measuring instruments.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

[BernardLanguillier]

Following: the launch of Nikon's P6000 proprietary Windows only NRW format; a lackluster Capture NX2 (Mac) update;  and now a cross-licensing agreement between the two companies, should I be worried?

Microsoft is investing more in it's Mac Business Unit.  It's reasonable to assume Nikon do not want to disenfranchise a significant and growing user base. But. Both Microsoft and Nikon have an established history of developing proprietary formats. This makes life difficult for third party developers, leaving customers with few options.

Understandably Adobe have expressed concerns about NRW, but am I right to feel concerned?
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If I am not mistaken, Thomas Knoll, nowadays an external consultant working for Adobe on the raw converter of ACR and LR, has said that the MS codec would not help them much supporting NRW, he has not said that they would not support the format.

As far as Nikon focusing more on Win platform than Mac, at the current time this is only the case for NRW support. I agree with you that it is worrying if it is indicative of a more general trend.

On the other hand Japan is the market in the world where the Mac has the largest foot print both for pro and private users, and Nikon has been paying a lot of attention to the needs of the Japanese market when designing its products. It is probably in fact the only market they had seriously listening to until the D3 speccing phase.

Based on this, I would be surprised if Nikon decided to commit on significant moves that would hurt its Mac based users population.

As of now, Adobe with its non support of 64 bits in CS4 on Mac is IMHO hurting more Mac users than Nikon is, whatever the very good reasons they might have.

Cheers,
Bernard

[ruraltrekker]

As of now, Adobe with its non support of 64 bits in CS4 on Mac is IMHO hurting more Mac users than Nikon is, whatever the very good reasons they might have.
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Bernard, it's not that Adobe is not supporting 64 bit (in the MAC CS4 case) but rather Apple doing a "we changed are minfds..." that caused 64 bit version of CS4 for the Mac to not happen. It's Apple"s fault. In effect, Adobe has to start over on the 64 bit MAC version. How is this "non support"? Sorry you have to wait but you need to blame the right party.

Gotta love the internet...

Ken

[BernardLanguillier]

Bernard, it's not that Adobe is not supporting 64 bit (in the MAC CS4 case) but rather Apple doing a "we changed are minfds..." that caused 64 bit version of CS4 for the Mac to not happen. It's Apple"s fault. In effect, Adobe has to start over on the 64 bit MAC version. How is this "non support"? Sorry you have to wait but you need to blame the right party.
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The party I blame is the producer of the software I buy. I love many of the things Adobe does and have zero problem with them generally speaking, and have never been shy saying that.

As far as this Mac 64 bits story goes, sorry but I find this to be un-acceptable. I am fully aware of the carbon/cocoa API story, but I don't care. In the end it is Adobe who decided not to devote the resources needed to overcome this issue. They could have decided to delay CS 4 release 2 months later, or could release a free CS4.5 upgrade for Mac users supporting 64 bits. There are many ways to deal with this other than make us wait till CS5.

That they blog the news and share with us the dirty details behind the scene  doesn't change the facts. Even if a questionable decision from Apple is at the origin of the issue, it is a business decision from Adobe that is impacting us.

Cheers,
Bernard

[madmanchan]

In the end it is Adobe who decided not to devote the resources needed to overcome this issue. They could have decided to delay CS 4 release 2 months later

I respect your views, Bernard, but strongly disagree with your conclusions here. Adobe internally decided immediately to devote some of its best engineers to the project of migrating the enormous Photoshop code base to Cocoa. This is simply going to take time. Throwing more engineers or money at the problem cannot change this. (Rough analogy: human baby still takes roughly nine months no matter how many people you get involved.)

It is not a 2-month port effort.

So this gives us two choices. Either you can have a 32-bit update sooner, with all the bells and whistles that accompany it, or wait till the 64-bit port is done (however long that takes) and not have access to new features in the meantime. I strongly suspect most users will prefer the former. I also believe you are grossly overemphasizing the importance of 64-bit in the big picture.

[BernardLanguillier]

I also believe you are grossly overemphasizing the importance of 64-bit in the big picture.
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I fully agree that most PS customers will see little benefit with 64 bits, but I happen to be dealing with very large files often. A recent piece ended up being 6GB in file.

There are users who will benefit from the move to 64 bits, which triggered the Adobe decision to develop a 64 bits version in the first place, and I believe that I am one of them.

Cheers,
Bernard

p.s.: I happen to be working for a software company who has gone through the 64 bits migration on Windows. I agree that the process is a lot easier than it is on Mac with the Cocoa story, but I don't see why it would prevent Adobe to release a .5 version of CS4 when the migration process is complete.

[neil snape]

Two ideas in this thread it seems.

Now when Canon decided to work with Microsoft on the long awaited Vista Op sys there was to be a great advantage of running Canon raw through a CMS beyond the capacity of ICM PCS spaces. For reasons unknown to everyone , the new CMS was stripped of most everything that made it any different to the chagrin of colour geeks.

IT seems that Nikon and Microsoft again are trying to cook up some added value with a biased op sys functionality.

Which it wasn't so, hope it doesn't go ahead.

As for Adobe and the 64 bit coding , I'm sure it's a huge project. Not sure why it wasn't started earlier on though.
It doesn't give much reason to update to CS4 for Mac though. What else will be in CS4 would have to be a serious must have feature set then to forget the pain of a forced CS5 upgrade further on.